WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ SSS-Class Revival Hunter ◈
Chapter 252: Independence (1)
──────
The luminescence enveloping me slowly dissipated.
Swoooosh-
For some reason, the sound ringing in my ears was oddly feeble, though the sight before me was nothing short of sacred.
Starting from the light encircling my head, then my neck, shoulders, arms, and eventually legs and feet, the light unfurled like silk threads, dispersing in all directions.
‘Perhaps these luminescences are some sort of skill.’
Then, whose life might be encapsulated within them?
Feeling strangely overwhelmed, I quietly watched the rippling silk dissolve...
“No way! A forfeiture!”
Or rather, I could not keep watching.
The familiar face of the princess suddenly popped up from the ground.
Not only the sound effects but even the background seemed drained, with a hole forming on the ground and her emerging with grunts. A ghost, perhaps? Had the horror movie industry hit a slump, leading her to take up roles in comedy films? Such a pity….
“Yooou, what were you thinking? Why would you forfeit here!?”
The Princess Who Strolls Through Mirages.
Being both a pillar supporting the tower and the daughter of the Tower Master.
The girl, who likely held the most powerful influence next to the Tower Master, was venting her stress, flailing her usual pillow.
“Are you mistaken? Huh? Our King of Death, just pretending to forfeit while concocting some cunning plan, right? I trust you completely. Come on, speak up!”
“No.”
I replied calmly.
“I’m really going to forfeit.”
“What! Seriouslyyyyy!?”
The princess exploded in disbelief.
“Why wreck a sure thing at the last minute? What is this? After all the care and effort you poured into raising the Earth Spirit Tribe children! They finally had a real chance to unify the continent. So why, why would you forfeit...?”
“The kids didn't want it.”
“Huh?”
I sat down on a white chair. This space, with only white extending to the horizon, was surprisingly convenient. Just thinking, [It would be nice to have a chair here], made one appear.
As I sat, tea and cups also appeared as if they had been waiting.
“Hmm.”
I lifted the tea to smell its fragrance. It was indeed a sophisticated peach tea. To put it metaphorically…
"......."
It tasted as though Lipton iced tea had first been knighted, then rendered devoted service for three generations, until its third-generation descendant led the kingdom to victory in a crucial battle and was finally raised to the full nobility.
Hmm.
I tasted the tea, bowing my head slightly.
“I wonder when my food metaphors will become more elegant…”
“Sigh…”
“Don’t sigh, Princess. I’m the one who wants to sigh.”
Seeing my commoner-like attitude, perhaps the princess regained some of her noble dignity.
She propped her forehead and plunked down opposite me, shrugging as if postponing her reprimand.
“Well, it’ll get fancier, won’t it? When I first tried pizza as a kid, I was as moved as when eating 3 pork cutlets. But as I grew older and ate seasoned chicken, I was shocked as if it were 5 pizzas.”
“So, in your world, there are pork cutlets, pizza, and seasoned chicken.”
“Yeah. So now, my basic unit of taste is seasoned chicken. Compared to my childhood, I’ve indeed become quite a gourmet.”
Truly a luxurious palate.
‘Is this befitting a kingdom’s noble... or rather, a pillar of the tower?’
For someone like the Princess, who had lived above the clouds, it must be impossible to imagine a life like mine, spent counting how many pieces of tteokbokki a street vendor gave me... I was thinking that when she spoke, hugging her pillow.
“But still, the most delicious thing was the bean paste stew my mother cooked.”
“There’s bean paste stew too.”
“Yeah. That's the one taste I couldn’t express with any amount of seasoned chicken. It’s literally the taste of memories. That's why I still often ask her to cook it.”
“I understand. I often remember the rice the orphanage director made me, mixed with a fried egg, sesame oil, and soy sauce. In fact, before challenging the thirty-first floor, I asked for it and got to eat it several times.”
If my family members were here, Ester would have asked, ‘Does the Tower Master cook bean paste stew?’, Silvia would have wondered, ‘Is your family really noble…?’, and Kim Yul would have scolded, ‘Stop exploiting my friend for egg rice, family head. Do you not have hands or feet? Make it yourself.’ But none of that happened.
It’s metaphorical, indicating that only the princess and I were present, not the family members.
-Crazy bastard….
[Shiny deeply agrees in silence with the Sword Emperor.]
As always, let's not mind these two.
Anyway, that's how the princess and I, from different economic classes, dramatically reached a consensus.
‘Huh.’
Suddenly, I felt slightly dizzy.
The Semi-Divine Eye activated while facing Viper.
Without warning, it flickered before my eyes, pulling me into a daydream.
-My child.
It felt like stealing someone's past in a trauma.
-The daughter of a humble servant...
It was a dark underground place.
Viscount Jaa Soo-Jeong, before becoming the Tower Master, was caring for someone with an expression I had never seen before.
A small child.
Much smaller than now, but I recognized her as [The Princess Who Strolls Through Mirages].
-The daughter I love...
The figure who would become the Master of All Lives and the Goddess of the Tower caressed the child's cheek,
-Yes, let's go home. Let's go to sleep, mommy.
said the girl, not yet the overall administrator of this stage, caressing her cheek in return.
"......."
I blankly watched the daydream.
The place where the mother and daughter caressed each other's cheeks was a sanctuary. It seemed that no one should dare approach. In the eyes of the Tower Master looking down at her daughter, there was only affection, a kind that brought tears to the eyes just by watching.
Perhaps this was one of the true faces of a god.
The god and her daughter held hands and left somewhere. That was it.
In the daydream shown by the Semi-Divine Eye, I couldn't tell where they were going or why they said [let's go home].
Just as the two left the dark underground and climbed some stairs,
"......."
Thunk,
the daydream ended.
I blinked my eyes.
Reality continued where the dream had broken off.
“---So, I’m actually quite good at cooking, you know?”
The Princess Who Strolls Through Mirages chattered excitedly.
“If my cooking were given an item grade, it would be EX rank. It could not possibly be anything else. I inherited Mom's touch in the kitchen, after all. If I used that touch to make seasoned chicken instead of soybean-paste stew... and if that became the taste of memory, King of Death, it would be a revolution in flavor. An epic journey worthy of a novel called The Princess Is Cooking! running for about two hundred chapters...”
The princess, unaware that I had just had a daydream, proudly rambled on about what she wanted to say.
In her eyes, I appeared troubled. Not just because of her terrifying plan for a culinary revolution.
I was pondering the [phenomenon] that had just occurred to me.
‘Is this also a fragment of the Tower Master's trauma?’
For Jaa Soo-Jeong, her entire life was practically trauma.
She collected not only her own traumas but also those of others, and even created countless parallel worlds under the premise [what if something else had happened]. In each parallel world, Jaa Soo-Jeong saved someone, died, was tortured, or was brutally murdered.
‘All those memories are now potentially hidden within me.’
It seems the speculation I had while facing Viper was correct.
‘Even now.’
The volume of information is so vast that I can't consciously grasp it while awake,
But occasionally, unconsciously, like in a dream, it appears.
‘This is troublesome.’
I might see a scene from decades in the future or an event from hundreds of years ago in a world completely unrelated to me.
No, or perhaps I'll see a possible world like the one where Yoo Soo-Ha was with Jaa Soo-Jeong.
What else should I call this if not a daydream?
‘I understand why she tried so hard to dissuade me back then.’
I smiled bitterly to myself.
When I declared I wanted to see the Tower Master's trauma, she desperately tried to dissuade me. Offering other gifts or rewards, she begged me not to look at her trauma.
-Please, I beg of you.
-You will be torn apart.
The Tower Master pleaded with me like that.
Now, I think I somewhat understand the meaning of her warning.
After sipping what seemed to be an ultra-evolved version of Lipton iced tea, I looked at the princess.
“Princess.”
“Hm? Why, are you asking me to let you taste my cooking sometime? Sorry, King of Death, but first you need to bring me a dish convincing enough to earn that privilege. Think of me as the final boss of a cooking manga. When you bring me your finest dish, I will casually produce one that surpasses it and dramatically expand the scope of the story...”
“No, Princess, it’s not about that… You really love your mother, don’t you?”
The princess paused.
After a moment, a smile formed on her lips.
“Yes. I love my mom.”
Her smile was immediate, without a hint of hesitation.
“As a daughter of a god, didn’t you ever feel burdened? Why, in typical clichés, they say, ‘I wish I was born in a normal family.’”
“Ahaha. What’s that?”
The princess laughed while fiddling with her teacup.
“Well, okay. I was going to question you about forfeiting. But for now, I'll indulge in the King of Death’s banter.”
“How is it really? Living as the daughter of a god?”
“Hmmmm. Being my mother's child is incredibly nice and happy!”
The princess beamed brightly.
“But there’s an error in one of your questions. You know, like, ‘Wouldn’t it have been happier to be born in a normal family?’ That doesn’t apply to me... well, to any of my mother’s children.”
“Huh?”
“What?”
“All of us are children who could only ever have been born to our mother.”
I tilted my head, not understanding what she meant.
The princess sipped her tea, peering at me over the rim of her cup.
“It's hard to grasp all at once, isn’t it? Imagine it like this.”
Beside the teacup was a glass jar filled with sugar cubes.
She opened the jar and delicately picked the topmost sugar cube with slender fingers.
“Imagine a certain [special] person who, once born, will inevitably massacre people.”
The lifted sugar cube slowly moved out of the jar.
“In any world, this person is the same.”
The sugar cube, transferred over the teacup, dropped with a plunk.
“Ruining people, burning lands, destroying countries, crumbling continents.”
The sugar cube dissolved, swirling in the tea.
“In any world. In any family. Under any parents, this doesn’t change. This person is truly, truly ‘special’ in that sense.”
That was the wish I once harbored for Yoo Soo-Ha.
Wishing that Yoo Soo-Ha would be an irredeemable being from the moment of birth, or even before, envisioning some demonic entity.
“No one can reform this person. No one can teach this person about love. No one can convince or persuade this person that ‘the world is better existing as it is rather than not.’”
The princess lifted her cup to her lips.
As she set the cup back on the table, I anticipated the conclusion and shivered at the conclusion I surmised.
Chills ran down my spine.
“That’s…”
“There are exactly 24 of these ‘special’ ones across all creation.”
The princess smiled broadly.
“And coincidentally, there are 24 children of our mother.”
“...”
“Of the twenty-four, I am the eldest. In our kingdom, the one you visited, I am called Baek Soo-Jeong, meaning ‘White Crystal.’ Honestly, my younger siblings are such troublemakers. It is exhausting!”
*Her name has the hanja for ‘Quartz’, a white crystal. ‘Baek’ in korean means ‘White’ and ‘Soo-Jeong’, as mentioned before, means crystal.
I remained silent.
Unconsciously, I murmured the Tower Master’s often-spoken maxim.
“There are no humans born wrong in this world…”
“That's right!”
Clap. The princess clapped softly.
“Our mother might seem a bit foolish, right? Anyway, she gathered only those children who would have been born wrong and made them her own.”
I said nothing.
“And Mom taught every one of us about love.”
The princess winked playfully.
“But that’s where the limit was.”
“The limit…?”
“We understand the emotion called love now. But Mom is the only one we love. Our scales are calibrated very differently from other people's. If you hang the entire world on one side and Mom on the other, Mom outweighs it with absurd ease. Hmm. The world weighs almost less than a feather.”
I see.
In other words.
In stark contrast to the relationship I formed with the Earth Spirit Tribe as their father…
"Yep."
The princess before me, the daughter of a god, is
“Right now, the only reason I don’t bring down the tower or towers is simply because Mom asked me not to.”
She is completely subordinate to her parent.
The princess, who sits in a completely different parent-child relationship than mine, smiled radiantly.
“Don’t worry. We don’t really disobey our mother’s requests, maybe as a joke sometimes... but we never do anything that would truly make her sad. There are a few crazies, but they can’t enter the tower, so don’t worry.”
"......."
“So, what was it... Ah, right. Forfeiture! Why did you forfeit, King of Death! The Earth Spirit Tribe was just two steps away from conquering the continent! It doesn’t make sense to forfeit there!”
I calmed myself down.
Perhaps, just now, the princess wasn’t aware of the expression she wore.
When she said [I will bring down the Tower], the look in the Princess's eyes... No. Let us say no more. Who gains anything by describing an evil spirit? There is no need to give voice to a curse safely sealed within gu poison.
The princess is the manager of the floor. I am the one climbing the floor.
That should be enough for our relationship.
“As I mentioned, the kids didn’t like it.”
“The kids? The Earth Spirit Tribe didn’t like it? That’s why you forfeited?”
“That’s right."
I nodded.
“We offered our help to the Earth Spirit Tribe. In the midst of life and death battles, who wouldn’t want help? Yet, the Earth Spirit Tribe flatly refused, saying, ‘This is our matter.’”
“Hmm.”
“They are already forging their own path. Everything happening there, the mistakes... even the deaths, they believe they can and must handle on their own. They have the capability too.”
I recalled the current Chairman of the Council who had replied to Uburka in a way that said, [Ancestor, please just back off], and smiled slightly.
“They’ve grown up.”
"......."
“I must not interfere and tell them what to do anymore. Of course, refusing to interfere may lead to greater losses. That is sad and infuriating, but unless the Earth Spirit Tribe children ask me for help first, I will do no more than watch over them.”
Luck and ability favored me, and I succeeded in raising the Earth Spirit Tribe to be the top race of the continent.
But I don’t want to say or hear things like, ‘It’s all thanks to me raising you’ or ‘You should worship me as a god.’
‘This is as far as I go.’
My role in guiding these kids from outside their world ends here.
The Earth Spirit Tribe kids have stood on the ground with their own feet.
They have proved they don’t need more than their own strength to defeat their enemies and don’t need a god’s shoulder to reach their destination.
Then, the only thing left for a god is to step back and watch them.
“But still! Aren’t you worried or curious?”
The princess flapped her pillow.
“For instance, what disasters await on the remaining floors? What will happen with the Earth Spirit Tribe's one remaining evolution? What are those deferred rewards?”
“I do know the identities of the remaining layers.”
Naturally.
Before regressing, I had seen Yoo Soo-Ha clear up to the 40th floor.
‘Especially from the 37th floor, they’re what you call [World Quests].’
No longer localized missions, their content wouldn’t stray far from what I knew.
“I also know about the rewards.”
I had once told my Tower companions that the fact that the floor-clear rewards remained undisclosed was itself a mystery.
This will be disclosed the moment the 40th floor is cleared.
Moreover, for that reason.
“I am not worried that I will miss the chance to meet the Earth Spirit Tribe after their final evolution.”
I stated confidently.
“I, the King of Death, will forfeit at the 36th floor. Princess Who Strolls Through Mirages.”
"......."
“And soon, I’ll resume climbing and, as promised, save your mother.”
I bowed my head.
“So, please.”
"......."
“Please allow me to grant those children their independence.”
A long, long silence followed.
The Princess sighed and stared at me. Intently. Endlessly. Before long, the tea's aroma had faded and all its warmth had dissipated. We watched each other for dozens of minutes, each hiding the sound of our heart, before the Princess slowly parted her lips.
“Okay.”
The princess smiled bitterly.
“The goblins have become independent before I have.”
With that quiet lament, the voice of the tower announced.
[Stage forfeited.]
[The King of Death forfeits the thirty-sixth-floor stage.]
[‘The Princess Who Strolls Through Mirages’ acknowledges the King of Death’s forfeiture!]
Here we go.
Children.
Now, it's your era.
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